Afternoon People
by Behold the Crazed Fiend
Summary: Clans and their power struggles, not everyone wants 'em so badly as you. [oneshot, sasukehinata]


**Title:** Afternoon People  
**For:** megaminoeien, for the sunnydaylove community's secret santa event over at lj. Yes, it's very late. Don't remind me.  
**Author:** fringex1  
**Pairing:** SasuHina  
**Rating:** PG/PG13 (_very_ mild violence/self mutilation)

**Author's Note:** I guess this ended up being something like a character study, only with a pairing, so a pairing study? Anyway, I hope there's enough romance/angst/fluff to appease anyone. Enjoy.

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And now we're grown up orphans  
That never knew their names  
We don't belong to no one  
That's a shame  
But if you could hide beside me  
Maybe for a while  
And I won't tell no one your name

- "Name" – the Goo Goo Dolls  
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_This isn't the first time he's seen her here._

When he was eight, he had noticed a pale girl with dark hair, her small feet quiet against the golden boards of the deck overlooking the lake.

He considered running outside and telling her she was trespassing; didn't she know this was Uchiha property? Keeping an eye on her through the curtain, he moved his hand to the doorknob.

But then the sun dove beneath the water and sent ribbons of purple, red, and pink dancing along her bare arms. They both froze as they were, the girl watching the sunset creep like fire over the treetops, and the boy watching her slender figure drowning in the twilight, her summer dress blooming like a white flower through the darkness.

He didn't move away from the window until the black leaves of the night had enveloped her.

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_Now she's here again, and he suddenly finds he has neither the energy nor the desire to chase her away._

_She is laying flat on her back, her hair a dark liquid against the planks of the deck._

"_Hello, Uchiha-san." he must look startled, because when he sits next to her, she smiles reassuringly. "I saw you coming." she taps the corner of her eye with one long finger. Of course, byakugan, her bloodline ability. _

"_Ah."_

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The second time he was when he was ten. It was late in the afternoon, and the back of his shirt was drenched with sweat. His mouth was dry and tasted of ash. He was panting through his cracked lips and his eyes were beginning to water from the residual cinders. There were abrasions on the skin of his knees from the numerous times he had collapsed on the rough wood of the deck. Exhausted, he found himself kneeling, coughing, staring at the lake before him. The water was a gamut of blues, glittering as the sun began to sink. 

Then he saw it, a white streak in the darkening water, drifting languorously.

"Hey! You! What are you doing here?" his voice was hoarse and hardly carried in the still air. But the girl seemed to have heard, because she turned towards him, startled. Their eyes met for a moment, and through the smoke that still clung to the edge of the water he saw that hers were white, as pure and colorless as the snow that powdered his mother's garden in the winter.

Then she dove, and he was released from her depthless gaze.

"Hey, wait! You're – " he coughed into his hand, ignoring the splattering of blood. "You, it's you isn't it?" There was no answer; the girl was swimming towards the southern shore. He wiped his hands on his shorts and, forcing himself to rise, and ran down the bank, ignoring the pebbles digging into the flesh between his toes.

Her strokes were clumsy and slow, and he reached the rocky beach before she did.

"Please!" she gasped as she pulled herself out of the lake. "Please, I-I just…It's just so be-beautiful here, and sometimes I…" He couldn't tell if she was shivering from the water or from fear of him. "I'll go, I-I'm sorry." But he found himself reaching for her as she brushed past him.

"Wait!" he wrapped his fingers around her clammy wrist. "I've seen you once… you've been here before!" There was a pause, and then she nodded, her eyes downcast.

"I'm Uchiha Sasuke," he suddenly proclaimed without preamble. His tone was slightly imperious, as though expecting her to be deeply impressed by this statement. But when she did not respond, he felt himself deflating slightly, and dropped his voice as he spoke again.

"When a person tells you their name, you're supposed to tell them yours," and he pressed his gaze upon her dark head, waiting, willing her to answer.

With great reluctance she lifted her eyes to his.

"Hyuuga Hinata."

"Hyuuga – you – " he dropped her hand as he felt an inexplicable surge of awe threaded with the barest touch of jealousy creep through him, "You're the heiress?"

Her nod was, if possible, even more reluctant.

"So what are you doing here? Shouldn't you be with your house, you know, being spoiled and waited on and – "

"No!" her eyes grew wide, as though surprised by her own outburst. "I mean, I-I just wanted to be alone. It's not so easy…"

"Not easy?" the anger in his voice was noticeable. Even as he turned away, hatred struck out from him, like a snake in tall grass. This heiress, this wraith of a girl, what could she know about difficulties? He drove his body to the point of breaking each day, training and teaching himself fire jutsu in the vain hope that his father would notice…This…this Hyuuga, born into her family's embrace, born with the guarantee of their love, she had no business deciding what was "easy" and what wasn't.

He shook his head to clear the images of his father and his brother, their legacies looming like great shadows before him.

"You'd better go. Don't – " He forced his hands and his voice to stop shaking. "You shouldn't be here anymore."

"Y-yes. Good-bye then, Uchiha-san."

He tried not to notice the sound of her small feet as she stepped through the underbrush.

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_By next week, he's begun expecting her at his little deck. They sit together, never speaking, except in greeting and farewell._

_The silence stretches between them as the sun dips low, touching the treetops with gold. She sits up and dangles her legs over the water, then turns to him, her slender eyebrows raised in question._

_Sasuke stares resolutely away from her. She's not supposed to break the routine; he ignores her until she finally speaks, her voice tremulous and soft._

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The third time he caught a glimpse of her, he was flanked by two ANBU escorts. He was entering the Uchiha compound for the first time in ten years, and Tsunade no doubt wanted to assure his sanity wouldn't break. He ignored them, even as he felt the blue-eyed Kitsune's prickling stare at the back of his neck. Instead, he turned to the lake and its deck. And there she was, just as he remembers her, white and pale against the warm, sweeping colors of late afternoon.

"That's Hinata," the Kitsune's voice is muffled by his mask, his hair the same bright yellow as the sunlight. "D'you remember her? From the Hyuuga heiress? Well, actually she's not heiress anymore, she gave everything over to her cousin when her father di – "

"_What?_" he turned so suddenly, the ANBU immediately behind him had to jump back. The Kitsune, however, had not moved, his unnervingly blue eyes still fixed on Sasuke.

"Clans and their and influence and their power struggles…not everyone wants it all so badly as you, Sasuke," he said, nodding his blond head at the girl in the distance.

But by the time Sasuke looked towards the deck again, it was empty again against the long rays of the sun.

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"_So, umm…is that where…" She trails off and raises her hand towards his neck. The skin there is covered with lacerations, and beneath them, three flecks of black ink are visible. "Your curse seal?" He stiffens when her fingers to fall against it, tracing the angry red scars._

"_Hinata…" he snatches her hand from his skin and shudders. "Hinata, stop." His voice is choked, and he almost expects to see smoke drifting over the lake again. He doesn't want to tell her about the nights in the hospitals, the long nights he spent scratching and slashing at the black commas at his neck, trying to cut out the memories that seemed to cling beneath his skin._

"Get him off me_!" he had screamed between feverish periods of consciousness, tearing at the seal._

_He stares at the hand clutching hers, expecting to be back in his empty hospital room, to see his own blood and skin under his fingernails._

"_Sasuke-san, you're hurting me," her small voice breaks through his thoughts, and he immediately releases her wrist._

_They sit in silence for hours and watches as the day throws its colors against the lake and the trees, like dying painter making his last attempts at a masterpiece. _

_He tries to ignore the unsteady glances she gives him from beneath her eyelashes. He doesn't know why he hasn't told her to leave, or why he hasn't left, why he's still sitting next to her, ignoring the way her finger twists around her dark hair, and the way the setting sun sets crescents of shadow against her smooth cheek; he supposes he's gotten used to seeing her here in the afternoons, her eyes shining clear and white in the dusk. He suddenly wonders what it would be like to see her like this, each day of his life, with the low sunlight shining like golden plaits in her dark hair. _

_He looks at her parted lips and when he catches them between his, she hesitates for only a moment before kissing him back. _

_There is no mad passion, only soft acceptance; after all they've lived through, fought through, slowly settling within this afternoon moment is enough._


End file.
